Seventy-ninth Issue! Dream Thieves
July brings sunlit days and dream-heavy nights, a season where the line between reality and fantasy begins to blur. The world hums with warmth and mystery, as if something hidden stirs just out of sight.
Welcome to the seventy-ninth edition of the Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter.
This month’s theme is Dream Thieves, a journey through stolen visions, secret worlds, and the fragile threads of imagination. Thank you to all who submitted stories woven with wonder, shadow, and quiet magic. Here’s to a July filled with light, illusion, and the dreams we fight to remember.
Congratulations to both winners of the July theme: Georgina Kamsika and Anne Wilkins!
The Dream Labyrinth by Georgina Kamsika – A haunting tale of a dream-thief witch and the writer she feeds on, until the dreamer learns to reclaim what was stolen…
Dreams Die Quietly by Anne Wilkins – A quietly devastating story about a girl born with the ability to enter and erase dreams, and the cost of a gift she never asked for...
This month's newsletter features:
- NEW Myths, Gods & Immortals Titles
- Flame Tree Myth & Fiction Podcast
- Introducing Our New Writer-in-Residence
- Original Fantasy Flash Fiction #1: The Dream Labyrinth by Georgina Kamsika
- Original Fantasy Flash Fiction #2: Dreams Die Quietly by Anne Wilkins
- EXCLUSIVE Newsletter Subscribers Special Promotion
- Next Month’s Flash Fiction Theme
FLAME TREE PRESS | July Title
We have a new Flame Tree Press title coming out in hardback, paperback and ebook.
A Rebel’s History of Mars by Nadia Afifi
Kezza, an aerialist in the Martian circus, can never return to Earth – but she can assassinate the man she blames for her grim life on the red planet. Her murderous plans take an unexpected turn, however, when she uncovers a sinister secret. A thousand years into the future, Azad lives a safe but controlled life on the beautiful desert planet of Nabatea. His world is upended when he joins a crew of space-traveling historians seeking to learn the true reason that their ancestors left Mars. Separated by time and space, Kezza and Azad’s stories collide in the Martian desert.
OUT 15th JULY!
We’re very excited to announce our new writer in residence, Shipla Varma, who will be posting every other Wednesday on the Flame Tree Blog in a new series, Between Worlds. Through warm, witty, and insightful essays, she will reflect on her personal journey navigating the cultural contrasts between India and the UK.
You can check out the latest blog post 'When The Husband Becomes the House Husband' here. Don't forget to tune in this Wednesday for the next one.
Original Fantasy Story #1
The Dream Labyrinth
Georgina Kamsika
You don’t remember the first night she came. Witches, like regrets, arrive softly, slipping through the cracks of your mind to take root in the dark places where memory blurs into myth.
Her name was Sapana, though names were slippery things when it came to her kind. She smelled of overripe flesh, and when she smiled stolen dreams flickered between her teeth like dying stars.
At first, you didn’t notice the theft. You’d wake with the ghost of something dissolving on your tongue; a sensation of wings, a whisper of laughter, the echo of a kiss that never was. By morning, only a sense of loss lingered. But the words that once danced at your pen stayed silent and still. Your work suffered.
Then, one night, you saw her. You were dreaming of the sea. Not the sunlit waves of your childhood memories, but the primordial black depths that cradle both shipwrecks and leviathans. And there she was, this witch, walking beside you above the water, her bare feet leaving no ripples.
“That’s a lovely one.” She reached out with fingers cold as polished bone. “May I?”
You tried to recoil, but dreams have their own rules. Her hand brushed your temple, and the ocean drained away - the salt, the swell, the secret things humming beneath the surface – dissolving like the sugar in your morning tea.
You woke with a scream trapped in your throat, and your hands clutching at the emptiness. The worlds you created filled with heroes and monsters no longer filled your blank pages.
The next night, you resisted sleep. You choked down brick-coloured tea, paced your room, bit the inside of your cheeks raw, and pressed your forehead against the window until your skin ached. But sleep is older than fear, and it always wins.
Sapana sat at the foot of your bed, her silhouette cut from the absence of light.
“Fighting me only makes them taste sweeter,” she said, stroking your hair as if petting a cat. “Dreams don’t belong to the dreamer. They aren’t yours to hoard. They are moths. I am the flame.”
“Why?”
Her teeth gleamed in the dark. “Because hunger is the oldest story there is, little scribe. And I am very old.”
Night after night, she feasted. She took the dreams where you were loved, where the lost still smiled at you, where your hands could still create beauty instead of ruin. She left you with grey, shapeless dregs, the dreams that evaporate before dawn, leaving only a metallic dread on your tongue. You grew hollow.
You found your salvation on the shelves of your favourite second-hand bookstore that smelled of mildew and longing. A grimoire bound in what must have been human skin. It whispered of witches and dreams and of how to trap a thief. You devoured each page hungrily.
That night, you didn’t fight sleep. You let it take you. When Sapana appeared, her fingers outstretched, you did the unthinkable. You reached back.
Her eyes widened. “You cannot…”
You held her wrist, no longer the dreamer, but the architect. The world reshaped itself around you into a labyrinth of stained glass, each colourful pane reflecting a stolen memory. Sapana thrashed, flickering between woman and shadow, but dreams were sticky things, and she was caught in the web of her own greed.
“Give them back,” you demanded.
Her laughter shook the glass, the smaller shards fragmenting. “You think this cage can hold me? Dreams end, little scribe. And so will you.”
“But hunger is forever.” You opened your mouth and swallowed her.
When you woke, your mind was full of colours. Your skin hummed with your old memories. The taste of a first kiss. The weight of his hand in yours. The exact shade of your mother’s eyes, lost to time until now.
Your dreams, at last, were your own again. But sometimes, just before dawn, you would catch a flicker of movement in the corner of your eye. A wisp of smoke. A whisper of silk. A rustle of pages. And you smiled, because you understood that the oldest stories were not about heroes and monsters. They were about the ones who walked away from the feast.
Georgina Kamsika is a speculative fiction writer born in Yorkshire, England, to Anglo-Indian immigrant parents. She graduated from Clarion West in 2012, and was the UNESCO Cities of Literature Writer for Wonju in 2022. This piece comes from a discussion about creativity with her partner. They had been struggling to fall asleep and that lack of good rest had made it harder to write. Another of her stories is ‘In the Star’s Brilliance’ at The Daily Tomorrow, and she is writing an interaction fiction game for Choice of Games. She can be found at kamsika.com and @GKamsika on most socials.
Original Fantasy Story #2
Dreams Die Quietly
Anne Wilkins
I first realised I had a gift when I watched our cat sleeping.
“Look, Maxipuss must be dreaming,” said Mama, smiling, and we both watched as Maxipuss’ whiskers trembled, and his paws batted at nothing.
“I wonder what he’s dreaming?” I asked.
“Probably hunting a mouse or a bird. We’ll never know.”
I scooted off Mama’s lap and without making a sound inched closer to Maxipuss.
“Can you hear that?” I whispered.
“What?”
“It sounds like a chicken. Maybe he’s hunting a chicken? The neighbours have chickens.”
“You can’t hear dreams, sweetheart.”
But I could definitely hear the squawk of a chicken and the howl of a cat.
“You can’t hear… that?”
The noise was getting louder, and Maxipuss’ mouth was curled into a snarl.
Mama shook her head. “You’ve always had a good imagination. Come back to the couch, and I’ll read you a story.”
But instead, I crept closer to our cat. I could see his heartbeat rising ever faster under black fur, eyeballs twitching under closed lids, and tail swishing. I put my hand out to stroke him, to still his dreams, and instead, I found myself in them.
Maxipuss battling a herd of giant chickens.
One of them had pecked off his tail. It hung from the chicken’s beak.
Another was pecking at his blood-splattered ears.
Maxipuss yowled in pain.
“Leave him alone!” I shouted. But the chickens couldn’t hear me, or see me, and neither could Maxipuss.
I stepped further into his dream, and as I stepped I left white patches. My hands grabbed a chicken, but instead, it was as if my hands were giant erasers. The chicken rubbed away. Everything I touched vanished. And still, Maxipuss couldn’t see me.
“It’s okay, Maxipuss. You’re safe now,” I said, and I bent down to stroke him.
He became only white dust.
When I opened my eyes, Maxipuss was still, and the dream had gone.
And so had he.
#
The first time it happened, Mama said that it had just been Maxipuss’ time to go. But it happened again with Puppy.
I crept into his dreams, as he cuddled on my bed at night, and I erased him.
Two pets, gone within a month, and the dreams were getting louder. I could hear Mama’s dreams when I stood outside her bedroom door. Her frightened cries as she spoke about the devil and all things evil. And Papa’s dreams too, as he danced and laughed with a woman, who wasn’t Mama.
Mama took me to a doctor, they referred me to a brain lady, they ran blood tests, and scanned my head. In the end, they said it was probably in Mama’s imagination, which was funny because I was meant to be the one with a good imagination.
The doctors said I was just a normal kid.
But, I didn’t feel normal.
“It was just their time,” Papa said.
And Mama nodded, and said, “Perhaps that’s all it was.” But she didn’t look at me the same anymore.
At night Mama’s dreams grew louder.
She’d thrash in her bed, and even though I tried to cover my ears I could hear my voice fall from her dreams.
“Did you sleep well?” Mama would always ask in the morning.
“Yes,” I’d lie, my young eyes already shadowed. “Any dreams, Mama?”
“None, that I remember,” she’d lie back to me. Her eyes would lower and her hands were always shaking as she gripped her coffee cup ever tighter.
#
I was eighteen when I met Josh. My first boyfriend, my first love. Mama wrung her hands and drank more coffee. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?”
“Always,” I said.
My gift was under control now, I thought.
No more dead pets.
Josh and I fell asleep in the back of his car. My head on his shoulder, his arm wrapped protectively around me. I hadn’t meant to slip into his dreams, but it just happened. One minute I was in my own dream, walking through a desert, and the next I was in Josh’s dream watching him make out with a girl, who wasn’t me.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
But they couldn’t hear me.
I should have realised I wasn't in my own dream anymore, but stupidly I pulled the half-naked girl off Josh. She drifted into white dust.
“Katie? Where’d you go? We were having such a good tim—”
I slapped his face, leaving the imprint of a white hand on his cheek. Half his face crumbled away before I realised. “No! Josh!”
I woke to find Josh, not dead.
But paralysed across one side of his face.
#
“I told you she was evil,” Mama whispered in her dreams. “She did that. To that boy, Josh.”
Mama installed a lock on the inside of her bedroom door.
“Don’t ever touch me, when I’m sleeping. You hear me?”
That was more than forty years ago now.
And here we are at the hospital.
Her eyes are closed, they have been for the last few days. Her body’s riddled with meds, and she twitches like Maxipuss once did while machines insanely beep around her.
“You think she’s in pain?” asks my daughter.
I know she is. It’s the screams of an old, frightened woman I hear.
“I’m not sure,” I lie.
I reach out to touch her.
I find myself in her dreams of madness, and I erase her monsters, leaving only one. A girl like I once was.
“Get back!” Mama screams and cowers before the girl.
I take the girl, and erase her, till there’s nothing left. The last monster gone.
When Mama is all alone, covered in white dust, I hold her hands in mine and kiss her forehead.
“I love you, Mama.”
She doesn’t hear me.
She never could.
But she drifts away like white dust as the sound of her heart machine flatlines in the background.
My final gift to her.
Anne Wilkins is a sleep-deprived New Zealand teacher who writes in her spare time. Her short fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Utopia Magazine, The Dark, Small Wonders, Elegant Literature, Sci-Fi Shorts and more. She has won the June 2024 Elegant Literature Prize, the 2023 Autumn Writers Battle, and the 2023 Cambridge Autumn Festival Short Story Competition. Her love of writing is fuelled by copious amounts of coffee, reading and hope. Anne is supported in her writing journey by her ever-patient husband, two wonderful daughters, and two feline writing assistants. Learn more at www.annewilkinsauthor.com.
Next Month’s Newsletter Horror Theme:
Our next edition of the newsletter will be HORROR themed, and we are looking for stories around the theme of:
The Mirror’s Maw
Please note that all stories submitted should be within the HORROR genre.
Terms and conditions for the submissions here: https://flametr.com/submissions.
Please send your 1,000-word story to the Newsletter Editor:
Leah Ratcliffe
Flash2025@flametreepublishing.com
The deadline is 20th July 2025.
We look forward to reading your submissions. Happy writing!
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